April 24, 2006 — Five brown bears roaming free in a forest in southern Slovenia are about to be captured and expatriated to France in a humane and comfortable manner, an official said Friday.

"The bears will be treated in a super-luxurious way," Slovenian Environment Ministry official Janez Kastelic told AFP Friday at a presentation of methods to be used to capture the bears at Masun, a forest resort in the Sneznik Mountains.

The bears will be live-trapped on permanent feeding sites or anaesthetized with special air-pressure guns before being checked by veterinarians, marked and sent on a 20-to-25-hour journey to their new home in the Pyrenees, Marko Jonozovic, head of the environment ministry's wildlife and hunting department, told AFP.

"The trucks have specially designed containers equipped with a camera, water supply (and) air conditioner. They look like cylinders so that there are no sharp surfaces on which the (bears) could hurt themselves," Jonozovic said.

He added: "Once the bear is in the truck we do not sedate it. It simply falls asleep like when you put a baby in your car and start driving."

Jonozovic said he had headed 74 similar operations to capture bears in the wild and the animals never suffered any harm.

"If we live-trap them, we use reliable traps imported from Canada or the (United States) with transmitters that alarm us when an animal is caught. We get to the spot in less than half an hour and then anaesthetize them, check them and decide whether they are suitable or not," Jonozovic said.

Tranquilizing guns with compressed carbon dioxide are used to put a bear to sleep, after which each bear is marked with an ear tag and given a special radio collar that will regularly transmit information on the animal's position and condition via satellite over the next two or three years.

"When the collar's battery is empty, it has a drop off mechanism so that the animal will not have to carry it all his life," Jonozovic said.

Experts from France are taking part in the capture and accompanying the bears on their trip to monitor their behavior and condition.

The translocation will be kept from the public and only confirmed after the animals have been released in France, Slovenian Environment Ministry spokeswoman Darja Dolenc said on Friday.

"The agreement signed with the French government states that we should report the capture and translocation of a bear with a 48-hour delay," she said.

She added "that procedure should prevent protests by people who oppose the replenishment of bears in the Pyrenees."

The Slovenian government signed an agreement with France last September to send five bears to the Pyrenees where the local bear population has almost completely disappeared.

But many villages' farmers and locals have protested the French government's plans to restore bears in the region claiming the animals will pose a threat to hikers and shepherds and create havoc among cattle and sheep.

As part of the campaign to prepare the arrival of the bears, a delegation of mayors from the Pyrenees visited Sneznik and Kocevje, another region in Slovenia's southeast where bears will be captured, on April 11.

"By French request, we have to send first three female bears," Jonozovic said, adding that the only required timeline was that the bears aged between three and six be translocated between April and August.